URI profiles [was RE: [uf-discuss] Comments from IBM/Lotus repabout Microformats]

Mon Dec 18 11:56:20 PST 2006

On Dec 14, 2006, at 2:53 AM, Joe Andrieu wrote:
> Andy Mabbett wrote:
>> 1) If profiles are mandatory (or implicitly required by
>> p*rser behaviour), what happens to people who cannot edit the
>> "head" element (blog or CMS users, for instance)?
>> Without meaning to sound flippant, they should convince their tool
> providers to support microformats. It would take some effort, but 
> blogs
> or CMSs or whatever can either provide access to the HEAD tag or some
> mechanism for specifying which microformats are in use and adding the
> required profiles into the HEAD tag itself.

This sounds ideal, but I don't think its useful in practice. The 
result of this standpoint would be one of the following:
1. Parsers are strict about profile URIs, which leads to slowed 
publisher adoption.
2. Parsers are liberal about profile URIs, which leads to making them 
less useful.
I suspect that #2 is more likely, though bother outcomes are 
suboptimal for what we're working on.
> When new technology is deployed, there is generally a transitional 
> phase
> where it takes developers to make things work. Once the tools catch 
> up,
> even non-techies can be a part of it. There's no real reason not to
> expect that transitional phase to be a part of microformats' adoption.
> My understanding is many of the tools out there are already working on
> some sort of microformats support, this is just another example of it.

What if we could skip that transition stage? What if a new technology 
could be implemented without people writing new tools for it? What if 
ordinary people could start using a technology without having to 
submit feature requests first? What if we just let tool vendors catch 
up later? [1]
-ryan
1. "Do /I/ know what a rhetorical question is?" (any simpsons fans?)
--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com